Brexit: EU Sets Two-Week Deadline

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has given the UK a deadline of just two weeks to give “vital clarification” on the amount it is willing to pay in its divorce from the EU.

Without it, there will be even further delays to the trade talks that Britain desperately wants to get underway tp prevent major firms moving thousands of jobs from the UK.

Round six of the negotiations ended in Brussels much the same way as the previous five rounds: in stalemate and with little evidence of progress, even though we are now more than half way through the 33 months between the June 2016 referendum and the scheduled Brexit date of March 2019.

After two days of talks Barnier and the UK Brexit secretary David Davis again stood beside each other to give their verdicts on the talks. And in the words of the baseball legend “Yogi” Berra it was “déjà vu all over again!”

Once again Davis implored Barnier and the 27 other EU nations to be flexible and move on to discussions about a future trade relationship, adding that there was a need to “build confidence” in the talks on the UK side.

Deja Vu

Despite claims from both sides last month that the talks were set to accelerate no significant movement appears to have been made, leaving an exasperated Barnier to set his new deadline.

Questioned about Britain’s “divorce bill” or financial settlement, Davis simply repeated the wording used by May in Florence, adding that there had been “significant progress on a whole range of issues … that will continue at pace between now and December and I hope it will lead to sufficient progress.” He failed to give details about any of that progress or whether he believed the new deadline could be met.

Barnier said there had been progress in the area of citizens’ rights, and welcomed the UK’s publication of a streamlined application system for EU nationals living in the UK who want to stay after Brexit. But he said that apart from the two-week deadline for clarifying the divorce bill, work also still needed to be done on the issues of family reunification, the exporting of social security benefits and the role of the European Court of Justice in ensuring the consistent application of case law in the EU and the UK.

The border between Northern Ireland and the south has also emerged as a serious challenge for Westminster, with the Irish Government demanding an urgent and definite commitment that a solution would be found to in effect keep Northern Ireland in the single market and the customs union to avoid returning to a hard border.

Border Wars

Ireland’s Taoiseach or Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has said “it is inconceivable for there to be a return to a hard border with the north” and his Government maintains that the best way forward would be for the UK to stay in a customs union with the EU and seek single market membership like Norway through the European Economic Area.

The UK hopes that clever technological solutions can somehow allow it to have “frictionless” trade across the border without joining a customs union. Varadkar is not alone in being sceptical about such a “cake-and-eat-it” customs and trade strategy.

Davis explicitly rejected the idea that Northern Ireland could stay within the customs union or the single market, a point made by Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire earlier in the week.

Davis admitted there had been “frank discussions” on the “Irish issue” and said he understood the EU’s wish to protect “the legal order of the single market and customs union.” But he added: ”That cannot come at cost to the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK.”

Although there would need to be “specific solutions” for the unique position of Northern Ireland, Davis added, “this cannot amount to creating a new border inside our United Kingdom”.

His stance has irritated the Irish Government, which insists that the UK’s vague commitments do not add up to sufficient progress on the issue. Dublin has rejected the UK’s position paper on the issue, saying the use of technology to ease trade flows on the island would not suffice.

 

by Bob Graham,

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